Field of the Invention
This invention relates to a method for digital rights management (DRM) of electronic digital documents, and in particular, it relates to a method for automating the management and interpretation of digital documents and their owners rights metadata for generating DRM protected contents.
Description of Related Art
DRM are increasingly applied and used to control the access and prevent unauthorized use of documents generated, distributed and accessed electronically in digital file formats such as the Portable Document Format (PDF). For example, when a user purchases a DRM-protected document from a rights management system (RMS), a policy is added to the document which specifies the rights purchased by or granted to the user, such as the rights to view, copy and/or print the document. The RMS will maintain a database of the document identification (ID) and the associated policy which contains the ID of the user and the rights purchased by or granted to the user. After the user downloads the documents as, e.g., a PDF file, the user may access and view the document on the user's computer through a reader program/application such as, for example, the Adobe® Reader application.
In order to manage user access to DRM-protected documents, the RMS will typically install and run on its server a DRM program/application, for example Adobe®'s LifeCycle® application. When a user attempts to access and view a PDF document on the user's computer, the Adobe® Reader will communicate with the Adobe® LifeCycle® application on the RMS server and transmits the document ID and the user ID to the Adobe® LifeCycle®. The Adobe® LifeCycle® will check through the RMS database and see what policy is associated with the document and under such policy what rights have been purchased by or granted to the user. If the user has the necessary rights, then the user access to the PDF document will be granted. Otherwise the user access will be denied or revoked.
The description herein of the structures, functions, interfaces and other relevant features, such as digital rights policies, application programming interface (API) for rights management and policies, etc., of existing DRM applications, such as the Adobe® LifeCycle®, may at times incorporates, references or otherwise uses certain information, documents and materials from readily available and accessible public information, e.g., “Rights Management” (URL http://help.adobe.com/en_US/livecycle/10.0/Overview/WS92d06802c76abadb2c8525912ddcb9aad9-7ff8.html), “Programmatically applying policies” (URL http://help.adobe.com/en_US/livecycle/10.0/Overview/WSb96e41f8a4ca47a9-4882aeb5131190eddba-8000.html), “LiveCycle® ES Java™ API Reference” (URL http://livedocs.adobe.com/livecycle/es/sdkHelp/programmer/javadoc/index.html), etc.
In addition, there are existing service centers for rights owners of digital contents that maintain databases of metadata associated with digital documents, containing rights information related to the rights owners' wishes on how the respective digital documents are used and distributed, etc., which are closely related to and useful for establishing and maintaining the policies associated with such documents.
There is a need to provide a method for automating the management and interpretation of digital documents and their owners rights metadata for generating DRM protected contents.